Cursing myself for running late, I hurry through the door at Beppi’s. What’s the point of life lived at such a harried pace? And yes, I know, it’s also rude to my lunch guest. In this case, the man kept waiting is Sydney art dealer
Ray Hughes
, who I’m taking out to lunch to celebrate his 45 years in the ­picture trade. His restaurant of choice is a ­58-year-old East Sydney institution, one Hughes has visited much more regularly since the 2011 closure of his much-loved local, Tabou, a French eatery that was just around the ­corner from his Surry Hills ­gallery and home.

The maitre d’ at Tabou would call the art dealer when he had duck on the menu. “Will you be in today, should we put some aside?" The answer was invariably yes.

“We used to sit there to find out what News Ltd was running. Paul Howes was also a regular," Hughes recalls of the Tabou days.

Yet here he is, looking right at home in a lunch spot that’s a cab ride away, not a short stroll up the hill and roll down it. I quickly realise that I needn’t have worried about my tardiness; Hughes is not the type to mark you down for being 10 minutes late. For boring conversation, hypocrisy or rushing through lunch to get back to the office, maybe, but not for lack of punctuality at the starting gate.

Far from twiddling his thumbs, he has already chosen the wine – a Henschke grenache – had it decanted and is sipping on a glass of it as The Australian Financial Review photographer Louise takes his ­picture. A mural adorns one wall and all manner of dusty, expensive-looking wine bottles line another. Could a 1959 Grange be among them?

Politically knowledgeable

It’s a cheap joke, but a timely one. Only three hours earlier, NSW Premier
Barry O’Farrell
had resigned, after the emergence of a thank-you note he’d written for a bottle of Grange he’d sworn he didn’t receive.

I know my lunch companion will be right across this; Hughes loves politics. He starts each day at a cafe across the road from his gallery, The Book Kitchen, where he does the crossword and gives the daily newspapers a thorough working over. He was a member of Young Labor in Brisbane in the 1970s, where he set up his first gallery in 1969, aged only 21.
Wayne Swan
,
Steve Stockwell
and
Arch Bevis
belonged to the same branch.

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“We’d go to three meetings a month. When it came to the presidential election they’d say, ‘why don’t you go for it, Ray?’ I’d say ‘no, ask Peter, he’ll do it’," Hughes recalls as we tuck into the bread. “And Peter did."

That’d be
Peter Beattie
who, long after Hughes left Brisbane in the mid-1980s to set up a second gallery in Sydney’s Paddington, went on to lead the state.

Hughes reckons Grange is “something knuckleheads give to knuckleheads". He notes with pride that
Geoffrey Watson,
SC, the barrister cutting a swath through NSW politicians at the Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiries, was a regular at his dining table in the ­mid-1980s. “He was just a young barrister back then," Hughes says. “We were all ­making it up as we went along."

Despite his political leanings, Hughes has a soft spot for O’Farrell. The then NSW ­premier was first in the door last September when an exhibition of cartoons by the ­Financial Review’s David Rowe opened. O’Farrell snapped up two of Rowe’s works, one of which had him being piggy-backed by billionaire
James Packer
. The other depicted former NSW resources minister
Ian ­Macdonald
as the left testicle of disgraced ALP powerbroker
Eddie Obeid
.

While selecting his cartoons, O’Farrell chatted to Hughes’s son, Evan, who runs the gallery with his father. Evan told the then premier that his son had recently received excellent care in a NSW hospital. “A week or so later, he rang Evan to see how the little guy was doing," says Hughes with a nod of the head that suggests it rated highly with him.

A generational affair

Beppi’s is an appropriate venue in which to dine with one of the art world’s most ­colourful and enduring characters. Like The Hughes Gallery, Beppi’s is a two-generation operation and before too long Marc, the son of founder Beppi Polese, is over to say hello.

We’ve forgotten to look at the menu, so when the waiter arrives we ask for his advice on entree. A buffalo mozzarella salad, and cooked asparagus with truffle butter and parmesan. Sold. “What did we ever do before truffles?" Hughes muses.

He asks for the pumpkin ravioli for main but it’s not on the menu today, so he opts for another pasta dish. I go with the expert’s advice again, angel pasta with seafood, and we add a salad to share.

Food taken care of, we return to our wine and the topic at hand, namely how the art business has changed over the past 45 years. Back in the 1970s, there were only a handful of galleries selling art around the country, and no one was making great riches from it. Most still aren’t, particularly not since the global financial crisis, and many galleries keep going thanks only to a wealthy backer.

But it’s certainly more of a business than it used to be. There are more artists, more dealers, more collectors. Art is more fashionable, more part of the scene. More about money. Hughes, for whom being unfashionable is a sign of intellect, hates all this.

As our entrees arrive, he says he wants to put two cliches on the table. One, that people these days know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Two, that we once lived in a society but we now live in an economy. He’s not in favour of that kind of person, nor that kind of society. “I have as many remarkable dollar stories as anyone else, but it’s not what has kept me interested for 45 years."

What has kept him interested, he says, is the poetry, the chase not of money but of ideas, aesthetics, talent. “You chase what you were always chasing, and it’s not ­quantifiable," he says. “It’s taking the time to have how you feel bent by someone who can say it better. I’ve had the privilege to work with artists who have done that for me."

Those complaining about laws that make it more difficult to buy art through self-managed superannuation funds won’t get much support from him. “Go and make some money and if you have enough money, go and buy some art. It’s not about tricks."

Not one to be underestimated

Hughes talks slowly which, combined with his eccentric appearance and love of food and wine, could lead some to under­estimate him. But he’s wilier than he looks – and than he wants you to know.

If he is to be believed, his business has grown over the past 45 years by accident: “So much of what I have done was not planned; it just seemed like a good idea at the time."

That may be so, but it was smart to move from Brisbane to Sydney in the mid-1980s, to consolidate the two capital city galleries into one Sydney space by the end of that decade and to buy his two-storey premises in Surry Hills long before the suburb became trendy.

Buying the modernist stock of
Rudy Komon
after the famed Sydney art dealer’s death in 1982 was also a savvy move; ditto getting into contemporary Chinese art before most Westerners had even heard of it.

It was also smart to bring his son into a business which is typically hard to sell due to the goodwill being tightly tied to the founder. When galleries do change hands, they usually retain the name of the founder long after he or she has gone. But in 2012, the name of this business was quietly changed from the Ray Hughes Gallery to The Hughes Gallery, reflecting the generational shift under way.

Hughes is 67 and, while he’s not retired, he does less of the grunt work. “If I say I’m retired it means I don’t have to have a conversation with someone who wants to score points off me," he says. “It’s exhausting and it’s not exhilarating."

As our mains arrive – sorpresa, they found some pumpkin ravioli – Hughes recalls some of his early exhibitions. Drawings by British artist
Anish Kapoor
, now an ­art-world superstar but back in the 1980s, ­little known. “We brought 100 of his works on paper to Brisbane," he says. “We probably only sold about ten of them."

He also showed drawings by another British artist,
Roger Hilton
, of the St Ives School. “Peter Powditch, John Firth-Smith, Brett Whiteley, David Rankin and Allan ­Mitelman, they all saw that show," he says, alluding to the subtle educative role a good exhibition can play. New Zealand’s best-known artist,
Colin McCahon
, was also exhibited by Hughes in his early years. “I could have bought the whole show for $3000, but I didn’t have $3000."

Fun is its own reward

Hughes’s ethos is that fun, and chasing art for art’s sake, bring rewards that are intellectual, spiritual and yes, sometimes financial. As the business has become tougher, he has reminded his son of the need to keep making it fun, or give it up and do something else.

“I remember a barrister client who came in to the gallery at 11.30am. We went to Tabou for lunch, came back to the gallery and had two bottles of red. He spent $100,000, then we went back to Tabou for dinner. He stayed in my flat and caught a plane to Melbourne the next day."

Hughes has an acerbic tongue, which he uses to dismiss many artists, art dealers and curators; actually, make that most. One curator he singles out for praise is
Glenn Barkley
, formerly with the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Of all the museum people he is the one who seemed to actually love the work," he says. “As opposed to the museum directors who won’t make a move without thinking of how it will look on their CV for their next job application."

As the waiter brings us two complimentary limoncellos, I ask Hughes what makes a real artist. After a long pause he replies. “Addiction." So who had it? “Freddie ­Williams had it. [Ian] Fairweather must have had it to live in a funny old shack and get a cab driver to take his pictures down to Brisbane. At his very best, Bill Robinson had it. He was mystified by the landscape, you could see him tripping over himself trying to find something."

I tell Hughes that for all his bluster, he’s got a romantic heart. Just listen to the way he talks about art. He laughs and says his two ex-wives would probably disagree. Then he tells me about a Queensland Art Gallery exhibition opening he attended a few years ago. “I heard someone behind me say ‘hello Mr Red Pants’. It was a grey-haired woman with a rather stern face. I thought oh f---, who is this?" The woman told Hughes her name. “I said, ‘oh, so it is’." It was his first wife, who he had not seen for decades.

“She came up to me later and said thanks for introducing me to all this."